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Takahiro Kudo
Takahiro Kudo

Posted on

Go - Safe truncate string

#go 
package main

import (
    "fmt"
)

// Truncate string.
func TruncateString(str string, length int) string {
    if length <= 0 {
        return ""
    }

    // This code cannot support Japanese
    // orgLen := len(str)
    // if orgLen <= length {
    //     return str
    // }
    // return str[:length]

    // Support Japanese
    // Ref: Range loops https://blog.golang.org/strings
    truncated := ""
    count := 0
    for _, char := range str {
    truncated += string(char)
        count++
        if count >= length {
            break
        }
    }
    return truncated
}

// Main
func main() {
    dataList := [][]interface{} {
        {"drink", 3, "dri"},
        {"drink", 6, "drink"},
        {"drink", 0, ""},
        {"drink", -1, ""},
        {"drink", 100, "drink"},
        {"pub", 100, "pub"},
        {"こんにちは", 3, "こんに"},
    }
    for _, dl := range dataList {
        r := TruncateString(dl[0].(string), dl[1].(int))
        if r != dl[2].(string) {
            fmt.Printf("ERROR: got=%s, want=%s", r, dl[2].(string))
        }
    }
}
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https://play.golang.org/p/QHFLlXr8v8i
https://play.golang.org/p/iakC8xxTlFI

Reference
https://play.golang.org/p/EzvhWMljku

The below code raises an error of slice.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
)

func main() {
    s := "drink"
    r := s[:20] // error
    fmt.Println(r)
}
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https://play.golang.org/p/7IfclYXADoW

Top comments (6)

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huahuayu profile image
Shiming •

if you test your code, there's a bug, your will get length + 1 substring not length

I modified it to

func truncate(str string, length int) (truncated string) {
    if length <= 0 {
        return
    }
    for i, char := range str {
        if i >= length {
            break
        }
        truncated += string(char)
    }
    return
}
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takakd profile image
Takahiro Kudo •

Thank you for your feedback. I cannot notice my mistake. Could you give me any test cases?

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jgreen01su profile image
jgreen01su •

Hi Takahiro. Shiming isn't exactly right. I don't see any bugs with your code vs his. But he's still half right, I'll explain why.

    ...
    count := 0
    for _, char := range str {
    truncated += string(char)
        count++  // <-- shiming is talking about this
        if count >= length {
            break
        }
        /* Someone may mistakenly put code here that uses
         * count forgetting that count was incremented for
         * the next loop iteration. */
    }
    ...
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While your code works, in general it's not good practice to increment your counter before the end of the loop. It would be very easy for someone to make a mistake modifying this code.

Better would be this:

    ...
    count := 0
    for _, char := range str {
        if count >= length {
            break
        }
        truncated += string(char)
        count++
    }
    ...
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But best is exactly the code @huahuayu wrote because he's using the built-in for loop counter. He doesn't even need to worry about initializing and incrementing the counter because the for loop does all the hard work for him.

In general, the less code the better.

Thread Thread
 
takakd profile image
Takahiro Kudo •

Thank you for your explaining. I have made sense. 😆

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derfenix profile image
Sergey Kostyuchenko • 
func TruncateString(str string, length int) string {
    if length <= 0 {
        return ""
    }

    if utf8.RuneCountInString(str) < length {
        return str
    }

    return string([]rune(str)[:length])
}
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takakd profile image
Takahiro Kudo •

Thanks! I didn't know utf8.RuneCountInString method. I have to learn more, haha😅

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